Kismet is hangin' tough. I like her spirit! A friend rescued two rabbits from his friend's veterinary school because they were going to put all of them down at the end of the semester, which I find especially hypocritical if the bunnies were only for one lesson.

Kismet is eating more today, but her poops seem to be mushier. Prob from the antibiotics, so I'm trying to get more probiotics into her. Now I have a schedule of morning antibiotics, afternoon probiotics, and nighttime antibiotics. She is going to end up hating me. Tomorrow is the appointment with the exotics vet, so we have gathered up the paperwork and x-rays from the other vets, and hopefully we will get a diagnosis finally. Although I'm assuming it is snuffles at this point. I want to find out if Karma needs to be treated too, since she seems to be the carrier.

fauxfrancais wrote:

A friend rescued two rabbits from his friend's veterinary school because they were going to put all of them down at the end of the semester, which I find especially hypocritical if the bunnies were only for one lesson.

That's terrible. I hate when schools kill animals. My high school had a beautiful angora bunny. He lived in this old gross wire bottomed cage and he was constantly matted and dirty. The teacher who was in charge of small animals would say that the grooming students needed to take care of him, and the grooming teacher would say that her students only groomed dogs, not rabbits. So nothing was done. One day, the rabbit was gone. The teacher said, "Oh we put him to sleep. It was too difficult to keep him clean and groomed." I was so angry. I'm sure we could have found him a home if the teachers wanted to get rid of him. But he didn't even get that option.

Leaving for the exotics vet in about an hour. My friend called up and asked if I could hang out, and I said I had to take my bunny to the vet. So she decided she is going to go the vet with me. It will be a bunny vet visit party! She is the one who's a vet student, and I made her promise me to learn everything she can about bunnies, because I can not go through this whole not being able to find a bunny friendly vet thing again.

Wow, what a huge difference with the exotics vet. It was a different vet from the one we usually see, but at the same practice. He definitely knew what he was doing. My friend introduced herself as a vet student, and he was discussing rabbits with her and how they are different from other animals, and what books she should get to learn more about exotics medicine. So I really felt secure that he would know how to take care of my bunny. He didn't rush us at all. We were there for over an hour. They actually had the lights off and were locking up when we finally left!

He looked at both bunnies, Karma and Kismet. Karma he said is healthy for her age (9), has a slight cataract forming in her right eye (which doesn't seem to bother her) and probably has chronic snuffles. Also she is a bit chubby! Kismet has snuffles and some degree of GI stasis, which he said could be caused by the snuffles, as he couldn't find any other cause for it. So it is basically what I thought it was all along, and the last $200 vet was useless.

He gave us a really intensive program aimed at getting Kismet better. We have to give Baytril 2x a day, subQ fluids 4x a day, syringe feed critical care (which he had in stock, yay!) 4x a day and give pain meds I forget how many times a day (I do have this all written down somewhere!). We are also supposed to continue giving the simethicone (gas-x). Karma is also on Baytril. He said she will probably always have snuffles, but we should try a course of antibiotics and see if the sneezing improves at all. We have to go back in a week for a recheck. He said if this course of treatment is going to work for Kismet, we should see improvement in a few days.

This whole thing (exam for bunnies, baytril for 2 bunnies, pain meds, fluids, critical care, syringes) was under $200. My friend looked at the bill and said it was a really good price on the meds. We spent $400 at other vets for basically nothing. If only we could have gone here first!

So, basically, I have a ton of care to give my bunny for the next week! I will be super busy, but I'll let you guys know how she's doing. Thanks so much for all the kind thoughts and well wishes.

Yeah, big difference! Finally I didn't feel like I knew more than the vet did! And he was so nice, spending so much time with my bunnies, and explaining everything he was doing to my friend. We have our recheck appointment scheduled next thursday.

Kismet is sure keeping me busy! It's not even 2 pm, and already we have done fluids and pain shots twice (my mom helps with those, because I hate shots so much that I don't even want to give them), antibiotics once, syringe feeding once, and gas-x twice. And the other bunny had her antibiotics. I feel really bad about Sable because I haven't had the time to really pay attention to her and do all her physical therapy exercises. So I'll have to try to schedule a nice walk in for her today.

The downside of her feeling better is that she has more fight in her and has decided she hates the subQ fluids and pain shots, so it's a big struggle now. I'm hoping when we see the vet again on Thursday, he will reduce some of her meds.

She still will not eat hay at all though. Any bunny people have any ideas? She will eat pellets, treats, greens, vegetables, etc. Today I was handing her different greens and she was eating them right up. I tried to trick her by handing her a piece of hay, but she just turned her head away and wouldn't touch it. I've ordered different kinds of hay and some pressed hay cubes to see if she'll eat those. It's so strange though. The vet has no idea why she'll eat everything else but not hay. Her teeth and mouth are fine. I opened a new bag of hay to see if it was a bad bag or something, but she won't eat the new bag either. The other bunny is still eating lots of hay. I just don't know what to do to get Kismet eating it again. She is not congested, is sneezing less, no nasal discharge, so the meds are working. But this hay thing is a roadblock.

I don't think so... she stopped eating hay before she was on the meds. I was actually hoping she'd start eating it once the meds kicked in. She acts like she's really hungry when I give her veggies and treats and chows down on them. Some of the treats are timothy hay based, so she's not entirely adverse to the taste. It's just weird.

In an effort to get Kismet to eat more and gain weight, I am baking bunny biscuits. I've never cooked for bunnies before, so we'll see how it goes! I mixed the Critter be Better powder (which is mostly timothy meal) with rolled oats, apple sauce, and water and formed the mixture into little patties. They're in the oven now, and I'm interested to see how they turn out.

Well, I just got back from the vet, and it wasn't great news. She had been getting so much better with the sneezing, and then all of a sudden she got really worse. This morning when I gave her her meds, I could hear that she was terribly congested and wheezing. The vet listened to her lungs and heard rales in the right lung, which means she is coming down with pneumonia. Pneumonia in rabbits is really really not good. He told us to continue the antibiotics. She's only been on them for a little over a week, and he said sometimes they take a couple weeks to really kick in. In the meantime, he told us to "monitor her quality of life", which is just a nice way of saying "you might have to put her to sleep".

The only positive is that because she is pooping, we don't have to worry about the GI stasis as much. Even though her stools are still loose sometimes, he said any poop is a positive thing. So we have to make sure she keeps on eating and pooping, and we can wean her off the fluids, pain meds, and force feeding. That will take her down to only the antibiotics twice a day. Hopefully that will be a lot less stressful for her. She definitely hates getting the pain injections and the syringe feeding.

If she starts to get worse, we are to call the vet and he will get us in for an emergency appt. If she remains stable, the recheck appt is in 2 weeks. If she isn't better in two weeks, then he said we will discuss more aggressive treatment. No idea what that would entail. If she gets really worse, well, that might be the end of the line for her. I nearly started crying in the vet's office when he brought up the quality of life thing. I'm just hoping so hard that she will get better.